Safety and your Chihuahuas

Keeping your Chihuahua Safe

At home we do everything we can to ensure that it is a safe environment for ourselves and our children. We must do the same for our pets, and this is particularly true with regards Chihuahuas. This is mainly due to their natural curiosity, their lack of fear and obviously their tiny size.

Try to look around your home from a Chihuahuas point of view. Is there anything that could be dangerous to your dog? Are then any small places where he could get stuck or lost? Are there any chemical products, such as cleaners, that he could eat and poison himself?

At home the greatest hazard for all Chihuahuas is their own curiosity. They love exploring and while they are doing so they can easily pull down heavy objects on top of themselves. They may even get up on to high places and jump down and hurt themselves. You need to secure these possible dangers in your home.

Chihuahuas are very bright little dogs and sometime their curiosity will get the better of them. They just “have” to know what is in that cupboard in your kitchen and will try to find a way of opening it. As intelligent as they might be, they cannot read the labels on products or chemicals that might harm them. One solution could be to put child safety locks on your cupboard doors.

As already mentioned, Chihuahuas are fearless little creatures and outdoors the greatest danger is other animals. They will not hesitate to attack other animals and due to their small size this can result in an injured or even dead Chihuahua. This is the reason why the great majority of Chihuahuas are indoor pets and never left to wander alone outside.

In the garden other dangers include fertilizer, slug pellets, weed killer and all sorts of other toxic products you may have lying around in your garden shed or garage. If they are accessible your Chihuahua will find them. While your pet is outside you really need to keep a close eye on him.

Whether outside or inside the house, small spaces can prove dangerous for Chihuahuas, they just love climbing in to have a look around. Wherever possible you should block these off so that your dog doesn’t get stuck in them. Another danger are toilet bowls. For some reason, even when ample fresh water is available in their bowls, dogs just cannot resist drinking toilet water. So keep your toilet lids down otherwise your Chihuahua could fall in and drown.

Once you feel that you have “Chihuahua proofed” your home, watch him as he plays or explores, he’s bound to find something else that could cause him harm! You will have to fix that as well…

If you found this article helpful, would like to criticise it or tell us about your own experiences, please leave your comments below.

1 Commenton "Safety and your Chihuahuas"

My little mexican shorthair was a stray with a broken leg found wandering the suburbs of Arizona. Nobody wanted him, so I took him into my home (to join four beagles! Yes he’s ready to ‘throw down’ with the alpha beagle over who is boss).

Back to the point I would like to add…I live in the Pacific Northwest (WA), and he can never wander outside alone like he could down south. The small size makes him a target for predatory animals, and it’s very common for eagles or hawks to swoop down and fly off with small sized dogs. As they are pretty fearless, I worry about him encountering a raccoon or a possum too…fortunately the beagles keep them out of the yard, but I don’t think even they could thwart a bald eagle from snatching its prey if it eyed the chihuahua.

And this also goes for other toy breeds as well… about two years ago a woman was walking her yorkie at Discovery park, and let it off leash to get some exercise, and watched in horror as an eagle swooped & snatched away her dog. My coworker had a large tree fall in her neighborhood, and it had an old nest in it. The whole neighborhood was stunned by the number of small collars, harness’ and bones that were in the nest.

So please keep your little dog under supervision…even though its a fact of nature, its a horrible way to die.